Just over a week ago, news broke out about about Kobe Bryant’s tragic death in a helicopter crash. The NBA Legend, alongside his daughter Gigi was one of the 9 unfortunate people that were onboard the helicopter when it spiraled out of control. The news obviously shook the entire sporting world to its core with fitting tributes pouring out around the world for the 5 time NBA champion.
However, amidst all of this sorrow and devastation, something rather peculiar happened on Twitter. A Twitter user (@dotNoso), who was presumably an avid fan of Kobe Bryant had tweeted about his death over 7 years ago, way back in 2012. In the tweet, he predicted that Kobe would die as a result of a helicopter crash.
Original story: A fan predicted Kobe Bryant’s death 7 years ago on Twitter
The tweet boggled the minds of most people as they started to question their own realities. What are the chances of someone actually predicting a death correctly 7 years before it actually happened? This was followed by Twitter users hoarding dotNoso’s account and asking him all sorts of questions. Some resorted to trying and figuring out ways that the Tweet could have been faked.
However, despite people’s suspicions and skepticism, there is no possible way that the original tweet could have been faked. Firstly, Twitter does not allow editing of tweets that have already been posted unlike other platforms. Furthermore, Twitter does not grant any access to its API that can change tweets to third party apps either.
Quick thread for anyone questioning the legitimacy of this tweet: it is real. Here’s some supporting info.
— Mike Beasley is on Mastodon and Bluesky (@MikeBeas) January 27, 2020
The sanctity of the things posted on Twitter have always been at the forefront and giving developers access to that would just defeat the whole purpose of not having an edit button.
Also read: Twitter CEO finally responds to Edit button requests
Yes, the third-party client (Carbon) that was used to post the tweet showed a version that was actually released in 2015 rather than 2012. However, Twitter allows third-party developers to update their app banners under tweets. This can also apply to tweets that have already been made. Or, he could’ve just been using Carbon WebOS v2.5 instead. In any case, there is no tech magic going on here and it is just plain coincidence.
https://twitter.com/BTCNSDAP/status/1224165474860011520
The result of that Tweet? dotNoso managed to gain over 50,000 followers in a few days. However, not everything is good about instant fame on social media. The Twitter user is now getting hoarded by Kobe Bryant fans who send targeted hate tweets at him blaming him for the NBA legend’s death, which is rather bizarre. Every time he posts anything related to basketball now, he gets hounded by people trying to bully him.
Obviously, being a Kobe fan himself, the mental damage that such things are able to cause can be massive. So now, the user dotNoso is actually trying to sell his Twitter account just so he can go back to his ‘old life’. And honestly, fair play to him if he gets some money out of getting cyber bullied by literally thousands of people online as well.
In addition to that, the chances of his prediction actually coming true are not actually as astronomical as some people think. For instance, if you drive around every day for a couple of hours, the chances of you dying in a car accident would actually be quite high. The same thing applies to people like Kobe as well.
Kobe Bryant has always flown around in helicopters and his use of helicopters was actually quite high when the original Tweet was made back in 2012. So, the odds of him dying in a helicopter crash would actually be higher than an ordinary person. It is a tragedy that obviously no one had foreseen. However, one could only imagine the mental stress and damage you’d get if people started blaming you for the death of someone you actually idolized.
Hopefully, the Twitter user can get something good out of it all and go back to living a normal life again.